


there’s a lot of us, i think we’re all all right

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: A League of Their Own AU, Alternate Universe - Sports, Baseball, Drinking, F/F, First Kiss, Flirting, Illiteracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:34:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25499929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: “I’m Stevie Budd,” she steps closer and Twyla catches the soft smell of baby powder, lavender, sweat and cut grass. It’s delicious, and for a split second Twyla wants to ask her how she smells so good after all that practice, but before she can, Stevie asks, “you can’t read, can you?”And Twyla’s officially been found out. She presses her lips together and nods and it’s nothing, but it’s enough that Twyla doesn’t miss the ripple of noise that passes through the crowd of girls sitting on the ground, standing in the red dirt along the foul line. She doesn’t miss the way Stevie cuts the crowd a look, the way the noise seems to lessen slightly, but it doesn’t stop the tears from welling to the brims of her eyelids, her nose warm and itchy as she forces herself to stare at the ground.“Hey, hey,” Stevie says, and she puts a hand on Twyla’s shoulder, it’s warm weight a welcome sensation to the cool flush Twyla feels, even in the midafternoon sun. “It’s alright. We just need to…” she trails off and starts to drag a finger down the list, making it about two-thirds of the way down before her finger stops on one of the lines of letters. “Here. This is you. ‘Twyla Sands’. You made it, you’re a Peach like me.”
Relationships: Stevie Budd/Twyla Sands
Comments: 11
Kudos: 27
Collections: Schitt’s Creek Sports Fest





	there’s a lot of us, i think we’re all all right

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCSportsFest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCSportsFest) collection. 



Twyla Sands never really learned to read because she never really had to. There wasn’t much need for reading when it came to helping her aunt knead the bread dough, or her uncle haul in wood from the pile outside, spreading it on a tarp in the mud room to dry out before either tossing it on the fire or into the woodbox. And, of course, she didn’t need to know how to read to crack the bat across the ball, sending it soaring over the heads of her cousins and the other Schitt’s Creek townies that gathered in her uncle’s far field to play almost every evening during the summer. 

Even when the war came, and her cousins and uncle and damn near every guy in town had to stop living their lives and go start dying for home and country — what use was there for reading? She knew her name, knew her family, knew how to make green things grow from the Earth and how to snap up from a crouch fast enough to sink the faded white ball deep into the pocket of her glove with a satisfying  _ ‘thwack’ _ . Twyla knows she’s kind, and empathetic, and an unceasingly hard worker, and she’s proud of all those things.

It’s not until she’s standing in front of the board, hat clenched in her hand, rocking back and forth with the jowly man yelling at her to check the list and find her name, saying over and over again that she needs to check the list, just has to check the list, needs to read the names and find out where she belongs, that Twyla realizes that there are thing that need to be known in the world. Things that, without knowing them, will always put her a step behind other people. 

She can’t read her name, so she has no idea what list she’s on, if she’s made the tryout cuts for the All-American Girls Baseball League, whatever that is, and the longer she stands there without knowing the more she can feel the heat start to fill her cheeks. She tries to smile, opens and closes her mouth once or twice in an attempt to force out an explanation, but possibly only thing worse in this moment that not being able to read her name would be admitting it to a group of people already on the edge of laughter. 

She starts to shake her head, feels the rest of her body begin to follow suit, but then a voice cuts through the air, crisp and clear and...sharp, without being unkind. Twyla’s heard a lot of sounds the world has to offer but has never heard a voice quite like that. 

“Hey!” The woman running up to her has deep brown hair curled up in victory waves, the bottom in a single deep spiral, folding back in on itself in a way that makes Twyla want to reach out and touch. Her own light brown hair hangs in limp waves by her shoulders, because she’d washed it and let it air dry and made sure to brush it out, just like before church, just like her aunt taught her. Sometimes, it just didn’t much matter when you wore a baseball hat most days. “What’s your name,” the voice asks?”

“Twyla. Twyla Sands,” she says, her voice cracking a bit in the middle. The woman across from her has a soft expression on her face, corner of her mouth pitched upwards in something close to a smile.

“I’m Stevie Budd,” she steps closer and Twyla catches the soft smell of baby powder, lavender, sweat and cut grass. It’s delicious, and for a split second Twyla wants to ask her how she smells so good after all that practice, but before she can, Stevie asks, “you can’t read, can you?”

And Twyla’s officially been found out. She presses her lips together and nods and it’s nothing, but it’s enough that Twyla doesn’t miss the ripple of noise that passes through the crowd of girls sitting on the ground, standing in the red dirt along the foul line. She doesn’t miss the way Stevie cuts the crowd a look, the way the noise seems to lessen slightly, but it doesn’t stop the tears from welling to the brims of her eyelids, her nose warm and itchy as she forces herself to stare at the ground.

“Hey, hey,” Stevie says, and she puts a hand on Twyla’s shoulder, it’s warm weight a welcome sensation to the cool flush Twyla feels, even in the midafternoon sun. “It’s alright. We just need to…” she trails off and starts to drag a finger down the list, making it about two-thirds of the way down before her finger stops on one of the lines of letters. “Here. This is you. ‘Twyla Sands’. You made it, you’re a Peach like me.”

She nods, letting her eyes scan quickly over the straight lines and swoopy curves of her first name before Stevie is wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leading her away from the lists and towards the grass, towards a bigger girl that Twyla had already noticed being loud, and funny, in even more talented in center field than her second cousin Joey, who always had to haul in the biggest steers when they got lost in the backfield. 

“Twyla, this is Davida,” Stevie says as they sink to the grass, Stevie back onto her hands as Davida quirks an eyebrow and the corner of her mouth as she holds out a hand.

“Call me Vida. Welcome to the Peaches.” She says it like she’s been on the team for years. Like they didn’t all just find out that there was going to  _ be  _ an All American Girls Baseball League, let alone that they were all going to be playing in it.

“Thanks,” Twyla says, her smile tentative but growing as she sinks to the grass besides the pair and crosses her legs, elbows on her knees as she stoops forward and picks up a few pieces of grass, braiding them together before adding a few more, the long strands adhering together after a few minutes in her hand, the grass braid slowly growing in her hand as Mr. Collins, the yelling man, explains the upcoming outlines of the season, goes through the practice schedules, introduces Mr. Lowenstein who tells them all the rules of the road, which gets a rise out of Stevie, and shows them the skirts they’ll be playing in, which gets Vida to join her. 

Twyla doesn’t say anything, but her eyes can’t stop floating off the grass in her hand and towards Stevie’s high-waisted trousers, how they seem to cut into the shape of her body in a way that Twyla’s clothes have never. She breathes in and presses her lungs against her ribcage, feels the barely-there curves of her own body. She won’t mind playing in a skirt, because she can’t imagine there are many people out there who will much mind what she wears, especially not herself. Not as long as she can still whip her arm fast enough to slam it into first base when the run is on the line. 

And in the end, none of it matters. Because they all want to play, all  _ need  _ to play, and even thought Twyla’s always been good with people, she’s never necessarily been good at making friends. She thinks she’d be good at it, if she ever got the chance — all the animals in the barn liked her best — but, well, where she grew up she didn’t have friends because everyone was family. When Mr. Collins dismisses them all, and the collective Rockford Peaches file towards the bus that’s been assigned to them, Twyla stops at the edge of Harvey Field, digging the toes of her threadbare shoes into the line where the green grass fades into the red dirt, and she takes a deep breath through her nose.

She’s about to do the biggest thing she’s ever done, and maybe she can’t read, but she can be brave. 

*

It’s a few weeks after Lowenstein tells them they need the press’s attention, and Dottie catches a pop fly by sliding into the splits in the dirt behind home plate. The Peaches are neck in neck with Kenosha Comets for second place behind Racine, and every last one of them is jumping out of their skin to get out one night and just  _ blow off some steam _ . Or, that’s how Vida and Stevie keep putting it when they whine, night after night, about the men in New York that they miss, about the  _ women  _ in New York that they miss — Twyla’s pulse spikes at that one, and she puts an intense level of care into ironing out one of the many pleats in her game skirt — about how nothing on the road now holds a candle to the nightlife back home. How 

They’re stuck in a pressure getting hotter with every game they play, so when the time comes and their chaperone Miss Cuthbert finally falls into a deep enough sleep that the risk is worth it, of course Twyla slips one hand into Stevie’s and on into Vida’s and follows them both out into the warm country night. 

They can hear the bar from half a mile away, the swing music raucous and alive enough that Twyla can feel it in the soles of her feet. It practically smacks her in the face when they pull open the heavy wooden doors, and she can’t help but smile, radiant and hopeful and maybe a little drunk, light in her head and heavy in her body in a way she remembers, even though she hasn’t had a sip of alcohol in years. 

Those years quickly come to an end when a nice young man named Tom offers to buy her a drink at the bar, and she takes the amber-colored glass with another small smile, the tilt of her head in thanks, and then she slips off into the small crowd of Peaches, her lips burning as she pulls a small thread of whiskey through her lips, over her tongue, down the back of her throat. She’s still sober, but she won’t stay that way for long, judging by the line of fire she feels tracing it’s way through her sternum. It reminds her Uncle Steve’s moonshine, of drinking three of her cousins under the table before they’d cried ‘uncle’ and begged off.

She makes her way to a far corner of the bar, to a set of tall tables where Marla is already perched on one stool, her shoulders in their perpetual forward slump.

“Howdy, Marla,” Twyla says as she slides onto the stool next to her, taking another sip of her drink, this time bigger than the last, big enough to make her chest burn, to make a tiny cough rise in her throat. She presses her palm to her chest as Marla nods and says a small hello. 

The rest of the team is either still at the bar, or filling the dance floor, and it takes a moment for Twyla to find Stevie in the crowd. She’s not with Vida anymore, who’s still waiting her turn at the bar, instead pressed into the arms of Tom, the nice young man who’d bought Twyla a drink and then not bothered to follow her when she disappeared. He was flinging Stevie over his outstretched forearm, picking her up with two strong hands on the dip of her waist, circling around her waving a single finger in the air while the trumpets and sing and the high-hat crashes.

"Look at her!” Twyla hears Ellen Sue drawl behind her, and Twyla doesn’t have to turn around to know who she’s talking about. 

“Of course!” Betty laughs as she claps her hands together. “Leave it to Stevie, we haven’t even been here a quarter-hour yet!”

Twyla’s throat feels shockingly dry when Tom flips Stevie again and her skirt flies high enough the whole room is able to see the thinnest edge of her white cotton underwear. No one else bats an eye, except to cheer for Stevie, launched across the dance floor in an incredibly acrobatic flip, and it’s impressive but all Twyla can see is that flash of white, that almost iridescent paleness against the expanse of black skirt and strong legs. Twyla takes another drink — or tries to, realizing with the tip of her chin that her glass is empty, somehow, which should be weird because she doesn’t remember drinking _ that  _ much of it. A sip or two, and they’d only been here fifteen minutes! But, the glass was empty enough that the ice clinked gently, and Twyla’s body did feel decidedly warm. She’s just chalked it up to the growing press of people in the bar. . 

She’s still thinking about getting another drink when Stevie crashes into her, sending her sideways and almost completely off the seat. She grips the edge of the table until Stevie wraps one arm around her shoulder and puts the other on her knee, steadying her and pulling her upright, practically shrieking with laughter. Her eyes are bright, and there’s a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, making her look a little like she’s sparkling. Twyla wonders for a second how salty her skin must taste.

“Lord, I have not done that in way too long,” she pants, reaching across the table and plucking up Evelyn’s drink, throwing it back and smiling wickedly at Twyla as she sets it back down. “Aren’t you going to dance?”

“I’m not much of a dancer,” Twyla says back, her voice loud enough to be heard over the jazz music pulsing from the big band. “But you looked like you were having just the best time!” She smiles, wide and open, her eyes soft and her head nodding, just a little, like she it always did when she was being the most truthful. 

Stevie’s brow furrows, like can’t quite tell if Twyla is being serious, is teasing her or not. Twyla opens her mouth to explain, but before she can, Stevie shoots her a wicked smile and leans into Twyla’s space, pitching her voice lower so she’s not shouting in Twyla’s ear when she says, “A great dance just needs a great partner, hon. I bet you just haven’t met the right lead yet.”

And Twyla’s face must turn absolutely scarlett from the way Stevie’s clear laugh fills the space between them, the way Vida yells at them from a table over, “Second Base Stevie strikes again!” which prompts giggles from the other girls around them and a completely rude hand gesture from Stevie. 

“But you don’t play second base,” Twyla says sweetly, and the look Stevie gives her is one that Twyla’s seen before, on the faces of people cuddling new puppies or baby lambs. Stevie’s eyes fall to the front of Twyla’s sweater, the deep green wool clinging to her like a second skin, and the punch of realization pushes a small, “oh” from between her lips. Twyla feels warm all of a sudden, too warm, too sweaty, and she pulls down the sleeves of her sweater, covers the backs of her hands, and stands.

She miscalculates, however, the amount of room remaining between them, and when she slides off the stool she finds her body pressed almost knee to collarbone against Stevie’s. The loose black silk of Stevie’s skirt drapes just below Stevie’s knees, and Twyla can feel it brush against the bare skin of her legs where the hem of Twyla’s dark grey pencil skirt stops. She can smell the clean, spicy scent of the plain Swan soap Stevie uses, and Twyla can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or the heat or the fact that she can’t seem to find a single sensory input not currently drowning in Stevie. 

“I was just gonna go for a smoke — you want?” Stevie’s tongue runs across her lower lip and Twyla doesn’t smoke but thinks it might be time to start. 

That is, until she hacks out half a lung on her first drag, coughing so much she feels light headed, her stomach flipping, the whiskey inside her sloshing dangerously. Twyla sinks to the dirt, back pressed to the wall of the bar, forgetting until it’s too late that she’s in her good skirt. Her head is spinning and her chest is heaving and Stevie is laughing, but not unkindly, and giving her that baby lamb look again, this time edged with a heat that makes her sweater feel half a size too tight. 

“You’re really not much of a smoker, are you, sweetheart?” There’s laughter in her voice still, but she sits down in the dirt next to Twyla and pats her gently on the knee. The tips of her fingers are calloused from years of throwing baseballs, and it’s that little detail that settles Twyla’s stomach, helps to calm her breathing.

“No, I’m really not. Thanks for sharing, though!”

Stevie tilts her head to the side and narrows her eyes. “You’re nice.”

“Thank you.”

“No, like. You’re  _ really  _ nice. To basically everyone, basically all the time.”

“Of course, silly,” and it’s Twyla’s turn to pat Stevie’s knee, over the thin silky fabric of her skirt, cool and smooth against Twyla’s warm hands. 

When Stevie talks this time, there’s an edge to her voice. “You know most people aren’t though, right? Like, that’s not...not necessarily normal.”

Twyla opens her mouth and then closes it again, not sure how to say what she wants to say. “It’s not that hard though, you know. I had this cousin once, who let out a bobcat that his sister had caught and tied to one of our back fences with a string.” Stevie looks terrified, but Twlya continues, speech soft and a little slurred at the edges. “Well, he let that bobcat out and it scratched his face up six ways from Sunday before it ran back off into the woods.”

“Yeah. I would too,” Stevie says, end of her cigarette flaring. 

“Of course you would. Things that’ve been tied up and trapped haven’t been shown kindness, why would they turn around and show it to another living thing? We only learn what we’re taught. Or, not taught, in some cases. But that’s not the end of the story. Etta — that’s cousin Hank’s sister, the one who caught the bobcat — she went right back out into those woods and caught the thing again. Took her two days, but when she came back, she was leading it behind her like a puppy.”

“But. Why? How?”

“Oh, no one knows why, Etta was always a little free spirited like that. But the how was easy — food, and patience, and —”

“Kindness,” Stevie finishes for her, and Twyla nods, smiling her brilliant smile again, warm and loose. Stevie nods and takes another long drag of her cigarette. A few beats of silence pass and Stevie says, “You know that story sounds made up, right Twy?”

Twyla laughs and it’s a bright, clear sound that fills the night around them like a song. “Oh, sure. II’m sure it probably does. It’s not, but even if it were.” She swings her head to look at Stevie, her eyebrows down and her mouth a thin, wavering line as she attempts to push through the haze of alcohol and her general good nature to play at being stern. “Being made up doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

And maybe it’s the moonlight, or the little hook of want behind Twyla’s navel, or the way her nipples tighten when she catches the smell of tobacco mixing with the mint of Stevie’s gum and the cottony smell of her shampoo, but suddenly Twyla’s entire world has narrowed to the small valley of skin between the peaks of Stevie’s cupid’s bow lips, to the way her lower lip sticks out just far enough from her lower one that Twyla could catch it with her teeth, if she really tried. So maybe it’s all of those things, and also none of those things, but Twyla can feel Stevie’s breath against her mouth, is so close that she can almost feel the velvety press of Stevie’s lips to hers. All either of them has to do is move, cover that last few centimeters of space that exists between not kissing and kissing. All either of them has to do is choose. 

“Stevie! Shit! Stee?! We gotta go, Cuthbert’s on the warpath!” Vida’s voice cuts through the night air and both girls jump, twisting their bodies away from each other and towards the sound. Stevie hops up and extends a hand to Twyla, pulling her to her feet in a single fluid motion. Stevie winks at her, and Twyla still isn’t sure she’s breathing when they round the building and see the group of girls huddling near the front, just out of the pool of light cast by the bar’s signage. Skeeter has her arm wrapped around Marla, who’s crying a little, and Twyla can hear Vida’s loud, “oh thank God,” when Stevie walks up and taps her on the shoulder. 

They move as a semi-drunken mass into the hush of the night, and Twyla pushes the almost-kiss out of her mind in favor of getting everyone through the little copse of trees behind the boarding house, taking the long way to avoid the front door and the driveway where Cuthbert will be waiting to catch them, in favor of sneaking in through the storm cellar. They manage it, but barely, a pile of giggles and whispers and soon-to-be-hungover goodnights as they all disperse to their various rooms. And it’s there, in the hazy almost-dark of dawn, that Twyla closes her eyes and lets herself imagine what it would have been like to cross that last half-inch of space and take her chance sliding into home with Second Base Stevie. 

*

The pace of the season picks up, and it’s all Twyla can do to keep up with it. She spends her days in the field, under the beating sun, the hairs on the back of her neck bothering her as much as the flies that buzz in her ear, but even all that isn’t enough to pull her eyes from the small speck of white as it flies from Kit’s hand to Dottie’s, from Stevie on third to Marla on second back to Dottie behind the plate. When it comes her way, she’s light on her toes and she’s ready — consistently, constantly ready.

What she’s not ready for is the nights, for the low yellow light of the overhead bulbs in the bus as they zip across the darkened countryside, the steady hum of the bus wheels below them, and always,  _ always  _ Stevie. Stevie, watching her as she watches the window, Stevie looking away as soon as Twyla’s eyes fly to hers. Stevie, who has a nasty habit of catching her teeth between her lip to keep from laughing too loud and it leaves a little mark that makes Twyla’s fingers itch to touch. 

Stevie, who keeps walking past her seat one night, thin, tattered book clutched between her fingers, to where Twyla sits on the back bench seat. “Can I join you?” she asks. Like Twyla would ever want to tell her no.

“Sure.”

Stevie folds one leg under her and smiles, leaning over and nudging Twyla’s shoulder with hers. “Thanks, Twy. The light’s best back here for reading.” And she sort of wiggles her book back and forth before opening it along the cracked spine and focusing her eyes on the middle of the page. 

Twyla goes back to staring out the window, but she can’t help but glance over every now and then, drawn to the cover of Stevie’s book, a woman with dark hair and a low-cut gown, staring out from the cover at the reader, her hair as wild as the look in her eyes. Twyal wonders, not for the first time, what’s going on in the words behind the picture, what it is that seems to keep so many people interested for long enough to finish. 

Twyla spent her early life climbing trees and daydreaming under open skies, swimming in the creek and hiding in the trees every time one of her aunts tried to call her in for 'book learning', as they called it. Even when it came time for proper school, there were just too many Sands kids to keep track of in town, really, and if one or two of them happened to slip through the cracks, showing up less and less and letters and phone calls home went either unreceived or unanswered, well. There was only so much any one person could do.

So Tywla never learned, to read or anything else academic, and the stories that seemed to keep other people so captivated remained a mystery for her. And she couldn’t miss what she’d never had, but — that didn’t explain that sore little spot right behind her ribs that seemed to get worse the longer she looked at the book, that no amount of deep breathing or wriggling her seat could seem to stretch or get rid of.

“I can teach you, if you want.”

Twyla jumps in her seat a little, and realizes that as long as she’s been staring at the book cover, Stevie has been staring at her. She’s fidgeting with the bent edge of a page, her eyes flitting between Twyla’s face and the book in her hands, and always, that little press of teeth against the pink of her lips. 

“What?” Twyla’s voice is whisper thin.

Stevie’s eyes go wide and she speaks like she’s worried she’s offended Twyla. “No, I just — you looked so. I didn’t mean to suggest...anything,” she finishes weakly. 

“You didn’t,” Twyla says again, clearing her throat and trying to speak steadiness into it. “I just. No one’s ever really offered before.”

Stevie’s brows dip inwards. “No one?”

Twyla shrugs. “Not since I grew up, no. There wasn’t much need to, around the farm, and plenty of my cousins knew how if we did need something read.”

“What about…” Stevie trails off, and Twlya can practically hear the words die on her lips, the words she’d heard bandied about by some of the few cousins lucky enough to get there:  _ school. Teachers. Scholarships.  _ Her cousin Beth had even gone on to become an honest to God doctor overseas before the war, so it’s not like Twyla didn’t know what was going on out there in the world.

“Aw, no. No no, that was all for other folks. I don’t mind, though. Really.”

“You don’t mind?” 

It’s her turn to look at Stevie with that confused, slightly frustrated face, brows furrowed and jaw set. “There are things in this life you can be good at even if you can’t read,” she says quietly. 

Stevie looks like Twyla had screamed at her, eyebrows raised and mouth slightly agape. “I know that, Twy.”

Twyal nods, but when she talks, her voice still has that edge. “I can deliver a baby from damn near any kind of animal, including people. The old farm witch in the woods taught me to read tarot cards and I got so good at it my Aunt June made me stop because she thought I’d summon the devil. I can embroider damn near any flower you can name, and  _ people like me _ .” She said this last one like it was the most important of the list, and as far as Twyla was concerned, it was. She’d learned in life that was a skill not everyone had, being likeable. She saw Stevie flinch, just a little, and Twyla’s face flushes. She opens her mouth to apologize but Stevie waves the words away before she gets the chance.

“You're right,” Stevie says, her voice soft. She meets Twyla’s big brown eyes with her own and she smiles, a small half smile that’s equal parts ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘you’re right’. “People do like you. Hell,  _ I  _ like you. And I don’t like anybody.”

“Except Vida.”

“Rarely,” Stevie deadpans, and Twyla giggles, hiding her mouth behind her hand and folding herself almost in half with silent laughter. When she finally stops, sitting up and letting her head fall onto Stevie’s shoulder, Stevie says into her hair. “If you want to learn, I’ll teach you.”

"You're a good person, Stevie," Twyla says back. "Maybe sometimes that's better than being nice."

And that's how Twyla finds herself pressed to Stevie’s side more nights than not, following the gentle trail of her finger across the page, learning and relearning the noises the letters made, apart and together, how the markings between the words change the way they sound, what they mean, what color paint they add to the painting of the story. Stevie helps her when she stumbles, wrapping her lips around the sounds and syllables as Twyla repeats after her, and then she repeats after Twyla, over and over again until they’re both giggling and the other girls are shushing them, asking what they’re reading and hanging their mouths in the ‘o’ of scandal when they realize it’s not exactly Gideon’s Bible.

But Twyla likes the story, likes reading about a woman who gets what she wants at the end of the story, even if she does have to put up with the most horrible men along the way. One night, Stevie mentions off-hand that the hero of the book likes to drink too much, and from that moment on, he looks an awful lot like Jimmy Dougan in Twyla’s mind.

With every night that passes, win or lose, Twyla gets a little better, and their bodies get a little closer. Twyla can feel it between them, the buzz of electricity that seems to spark off the edge of Stevie’s finger as she continues to trail it across the page, long after Twyla no longer stutters putting one word after the next. It shocks her a little, that the book doesn’t just burst into flame, especially in the moments when Twyla is reading about clenched fists and heaving bosoms. She feels Stevie’s eyes trace along the top of her head, the slope of her shoulder, and when Twyla glances up and Stevie turns the pages, Twyla can’t keep her eyes off Stevie’s nipples, pert and small in the cool breeze buffeting past the open windows, off the way her skirts hug and flare around her calves, the top of her knees, the bare expanse of her muscular thighs. 

Two days after the final game of the season, Dottie’s younger sister Kit storms out of the house, screaming about a trade to Racine, and Stevie presses Twyla up against the shade-cooled clapboard and kisses her hungrily, dragging her tongue across the seam of Twyla’s lips, dropping her hands to the slim curve of Twyal’s hips. Twyla presses back, winds her arms around Stevie’s shoulders and pulls her close enough that, when the kiss breaks, they both can feel the breathing of the other, heartbeats pouding and lips swollen. 

“That was…,” Stevie trails off, dragging her eyes from Twyla’s lips down the line of her neck, over the top of Twyla’s breasts, which are just visible over the scoop neck of her thin white top. Twyla’s blushing, she knows she’s blushing, and she can practically see it reflected in Stevie’s eyes, in the way Stevie licks her lips and forces herself to meet Twyla’s eyes as she waits for Twyla to finish the sentence.

Instead, Twyla leans in and kisses her, nips at her bottom lip, winds a hand into the dark hair she’s had haunting her dreams for weeks, gently drags the other up the outside of Stevie’s arm, hand landing on the side of her neck, just above Stevie’s pulse point. She kisses, and kisses, and kisses, until the heat of the day has been leached out of the clapboard and they’re edging over the line of any possibly realistic excuse. 

Luckily for them, when they slip back in through the squeaky screen door, no one asks. Everyone is still focused on Kit, and on the upcoming World Series against the same team who’d just taken Kit in the trade. 

*

When it comes down to it, the Peaches don’t win. Maybe it’s luck, or fate, or the twist of things that happen when futures and failures are determined by the fall of a ball, the scratch of legs and feet through the dirt. 

And once it’s done, it’s done. Lowenstein can’t wait to tell them that they’ll be getting a second season, that they worked hard and played hard and have earned this. But that won’t start for long enough that everyone will get the chance to go home first. Some of the ladies will stay, some will return. Twyla doesn’t know much, but she knows which choice is hers now. 

That night, when they manage to sneak out of the boarding house to the creek half a mile away, stripping down to their underwear to slip into the dark, cool water, Stevie tells Twyla she made up her mind before Lowenstein even made the announcement, that she isn’t ready to go back to the city yet. And she’s not asking Twyla to stay — says several times that she’s not asking Twyla to stay, but she doesn’t need to ask. Twyla has an answer.

It’s a yes. A yes to a second season, to more stories, more whispers in the back of a bus, more drunken, sweaty dances until the small hours of the morning, pressed together in darkened corners until the time comes to beat old Miss Cuthbert home again. A yes to slow kisses and slower orgasams, pressed against buildings or layed out in fields, hushed in the abandoned corners of locker rooms and with full lungs in the private hotel rooms they find during the season breaks they take. 

And although neither of them know it at the moment, it’s a yes to a legacy, a name, a history that fifty years down the road they’ll build museums to. Right now, Twyla can’t possibly wrap her mind around any of that.

So she says yes to the question Stevie isn’t asking and steals a kiss, slow and sweet and tasting of forever beneath a late summer sky.

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal love to my forever-beta, who not only gave me the idea for the best way to approach this story, but managed to save it when I mucked it all up anyway. 
> 
> Title from a quote from the source movie.


End file.
